Archive for September, 2004

My mind wandered off into oblivion when Emily and I were stuck in a traffic jam again last night. With a gloomy and scowling expression, I was thinking hard about some serious stuff. Stuff that had been encumbering my soul for the past few days — “where the hell should I party during my holidays ??”

There were usually there for only a short lapse of time, being paved aside by the attention needed to advance a few feet in the stagnant traffic. And the whole cycle would repeat itself until the car in front moves again. It was all silent except listening to my own thoughts and the radio.

That was when Emily switched to a Chinese radio station – and the voice of a gingerly female DJ started to fill the cabin. I was partially listening to it while I was deep into my trance of thoughts.

Apparently, the DJ was kinda giving an advice to a stupid bitch who called up the radio station earlier — about her triangle love problem. The caller’s situation was, she was infatuated with 2 guys at the same time, and decided to call in to ask the DJ for opinion.

I shook my head in disbelief upon learning that. Like, what makes one think that a radio DJ is the best person on Earth to solve his/her love-hate relationship? For god’s sake, a DJ is just like any ordinary person – THAT HASN’T GOT A CLUE about you and your mongoloid puppy love. Might as well ask your neighbor’s son. It would have been all the same.

Here is what the radio DJ actually advised the caller (translated from Cantonese) :

“Ask yourself, who would you think of… when you’re sad or unhappy. Then, who would you think of… when you’re at your happiest moment. If you already have the answer… then, that could be the person you love most…”

That’s when I protested out loudly in the car,

Me : “Oh come on! That’s so retarded.”

Emily : “What’s wrong with you? Do you even understand what the DJ was talking about?”

Me : “Of course I do. A slut fell in love with 2 guys. And she’s calling the national radio to consult the DJ”

Emily : “The called just wanted to know about more opinions…”

Me : “It’s always about the girls. Things would be much more simpler for the guys.”

Emily : “Alright then, how would you choose if you happen to fall in love with 2 girls at the same time?”

Sensing a trap, I quickly devised a smart reply

Me : “Oh no… dear. You know I would never love another… you’re my only love.”

Emily : “You don’t have to be afraid… just, answer the question. Try to picture yourself in that caller’s situation.”

That was a clearance for me to be honest.

Me : “Alright, very simple. I will choose the one with the bigger tits. Period.”

Emily : “Whattt???”

Me : “Yeah… if a guy loves 2 girls and has to choose only one, he’ll go for the one with bigger tits”

Emily : [passes out]

Alright, she did not pass out. But more like shaking her head in disbelief with her mouth wide agape. The truth is not always pleasant.

Watched “Pontianak Sundal Something Something” last night. My darn sister bought the original VCD – that doesn’t carry any subtitles (told ya original sux). Which means, I’ll have to depend on my long lost knowledge of the forbidden language to understand it. (*pontianak = it’s a female vampire from Malaysian folklore)

Normally, I don’t fancy Malay movies. I only watched 2 Malay movies before in my whole life.

1) Orang Minyak – starred by the late P.Ramlee. Watched it when I was a kid. Interesting movie for my standard at that time. It’s about some psychotic dude that goes around the village raping middle aged housewives. And he looked like Spiderman in black. Naked.

2) Bukit Kepong – a movie that was shown repeatedly on TV when there wasn’t any satellite reception back then. It was about a bunch of Japanese farts that mowed down a whole village of rookie soldiers (including housewives and kids). Kinda nice. It would be better with more violence and colors.

So, this “Pontianak Sundal Something Something”… big deal. Won a few awards recently at Spain. And I guess that’s why I was so eager to check it out. My third Malay movie.

My verdict ? Avoid this movie at all cost. Not worth even a pirated VCD. It’s really ‘sundal’. Which means, it sucks. The movie was edited in such a frivolous way that I didn’t even know what was going on one scene to the next. Goddamn.

A few summarized comments :

1) The pregnant heroine turned into a pontianak after she was murdered (she’s a heroine because she’s hot). But her maid didn’t (she was murdered too). So, does that mean, if one were to be murdered when pregnant, she would turn into a super powerful pontianak? And if that’s the case, why Sharon Tate did not turn into a pontianak to smoke Charles Manson’s ass ?

2) It seems like the pontianak (in the movie) was a crazy fuck. When she was resurrected as a pontianak, she went around killing everyone except the villain who murdered her. Kinda ironic, isn’t it ?

3) Alright, my perception of the pontianak is – a female vampire. And we all know that vampires suck blood. They’re gonna need fangs to do the job. This pontianak sundal, she didn’t have any fangs (just a pair of great tits). She killed her victims by using her pair of wolverine like claws. Zweek zwekk… scream… and that’s it. Cheesy.

4) The design of the pontianak was not impressive enough. It’s still the same old asian ghost design. Long hair, white robes and some very thick powder on the face. And in this movie, the pontianak even sported a pair of eyes with a very bad case of conjunctivitis. Made my eyes watery at certain point. Ma fuck.

5) I was confused who was who in the movie. The script was confusing. The flick was badly edited. Obviously, the director is a Stephen King wannabe. (and Stephen King sux).

I reckoned that the movie will be way better if it focuses more on the haunting of a pontianak instead of trying to cramp storyline, haunting and stephen king elements in it. But then, having won so many awards, how much better could the director ask for?

Went to watch New Police Story on Friday. Got ourselves some free tickets. Apparently, when Luis went to buy the tickets, the girl behind the counter mistakenly thought he had paid her a 100 ringgit bill (which he didn’t). She printed out our tickets and even gave Luis the change. And those were 6 orchestra seat tickets, what the fuck, heheh.

Ok, what did I think of the movie? I don’t know – let’s just say, the movie was a deviation from the original Police Story trilogy. Instead of having traditional badass looking villains, the director hired a few kiddies from a nearby McDonalds to star in it. To save some cost I guess.

Jackie Chan starred as Wing, a middle aged super cop that was fucked in the ass right from the beginning by a bunch of prepubescent looking thugs. Those teenage thugs were a bunch of rich kids that led a double profile – day time as a normal person, and night time as a bunch of psychotic criminals that has the penchant of yelling “wooooo !!”.

The movie began with that bunch of teenage thugs pulling a night time robbery in a high rise building and mowed down a whole team of cops that responded to the scene with some high powered automatic rifles. And that prompted Wing the Super Cop to take over the case. He sort of bragged that he would bring those criminals to justice within moments of the massacre – which was his main mistake for being too confident.

Then, with some magical ways, Wing managed to trace down the thugs to an abandoned warehouse. Instead of leading an entire army of police force to burn the whole place down, Wing the Super Cop led a team of young & inexperienced rookie police boys to do the job. But what he did not realize was, those thugs weren’t just any ordinary thugs (even having known that those thugs killed so many cops). Those thugs were in fact, a bunch of avid gamers (that was so scary), and that gift gave them the advantage to set some really wicked traps inside the warehouse to cream Wing’s ass.

That was how Wing lost all his teammates (including his faggot brother in law). But then, for some odd reasons, those teenage thugs did not kill him. Instead, they blew up a portion of the place to freak Wing up… and made him a useless alcoholic. I reckoned that all these were properly planned so that Wing the Super Cop could have a second chance to retaliate. (or else, the title would have to be changed to Teenage Thugs Story).

Fast forward one year, Wing was still a drunk fuck. During one of his drunken moments, when he was puking his bile out in an alley, suddenly he was shadowed by a youngster that looked like another McDonald’s part timer. He was Nicholas Tse, which hailed the name PC584003 (I forgot the number, so I made up one) and he rescued Wing from the alley before he got raped by a bunch of horny stray cats. Nicholas looked kinda cool at first, until a couple moments later, I saw him mopping Wing’s apartment floor. His reputation instantly went down a few notches in my impression book.

The rest of the story was pretty predictable, you know, PC584003 inspired Wing to wake up from his alcoholic sleaze and work his way to arrest those bunch of teenage thugs. Not much intelligent plots, and the movie would reach to its grand finale. The way Wing defeats those bunch of teenagers was pretty cheesy I would say. He actually did it by calling their parents into a robbery scene – which made those teenage thugs panic and went ballistic. Afraid of their moms’ nagging I guess.

The only thing that I really enjoyed about this movie was the hand-to-hand combat scene, which I think was pretty cool. Jackie Chan’s already 51, and he still got the moves. Now imagine your dad fights like that. Other than that, it’s just an ordinary musty Hong Kong flick, nothing special.

I was doing about 120kph on a freeway this morning, when suddenly, a Waja appeared out of nowhere behind me. Actually, I was on the express lane, but was hindered by a Pajero in front (else I would have gone Mach 3 speed).

The Waja did not honk me but instead, tail gated my car real close. I was like – “wow, our national car IS FAST”. That was so out of my expectation. I mean, I have heard rumors that a Proton car would explode or something if it was throttled beyond the 100kph mark. But today, I witnessed it with my own eyes, that was untrue.

Alright, I went a bit further by maneuvering my car into the middle lane and smoked some rubber. I did 150 kph this time – the Proton Waja, which to my surprise, followed suit. Oh goddamn, that was so unbelievable! I overtook the whole stretch of vehicles on the express lane and swayed back in front of them. My meter read 160 kph. I took another look through my rear view mirror, that Waja was still tailing from behind (albeit there was already a distance away)! That was so unbelievable! I was very impressed by the engineering marvel of our own national car. Simply out of this world.

Come think of it, Waja is actually an amazing car. It offers so many features at a price that is so reasonable, no doubt this is the car of choice for many young Malaysians.

One of the most notable pros of Waja is this safety feature called ‘the crumple zone’ – where the car would fold itself and crumple whenever it hits anything head on, sideways or backwards. This is to absorb the impact of any directional momentum – minimizing the risk of injury and maximizing the cost of repair. Take for example, Ah Seng reverses his Waja into a parking lot and accidentally hit another car. Thanks to the ‘crumple zone’ safety feature, Ah Seng’s Waja’s rear bumper would crumple beyond recognition from the accident. Ah Seng would have seriously lost his life right inside the parking lot had the bumper not crumple to absorb the impact. Kudos to Proton!

Then there’s this unique feature called “Automatic glove compartment warning system”, which is an internationally well known feature. Whenever a Waja overspeed on a road or going through some really rough terrain, the glove compartment drawer will automatically open – attracting the driver’s attention, prompting him to slow down. Slowing down more often will indirectly help to prolong the life of the absorbers and springs, not to mention reducing the probability of overspeeding. This is a genius invention by Proton, which uses a low tech / simple mechanism, to trigger a preventive measure to preserve the reliability of the vehicle.

Has anyone heard about the super high tech “poka-yoke headlights triggering system (PYHTS)”? If you have not heard of it, then shame on you. You see, Malaysian youths are known to be immaculate sleazebags. They don’t send their cars for checkup regularly unless something goes wrong with it. That’s where Proton’s PYHTS comes into play. From time to time, one of it’s headlights will automatically burn it’s own filament out without reason, triggering the car owner to send his car for immediate repair. And in the process of replacing the bulb, the car would be thoroughly checked for problems — which is kinda like an inadvertent health check. There would be no chance at all for the vehicle to fail (even if it fails, there’s still a crumple zone to save your life.)

And the windows. One may ask, how could an innocent car window enhance a driving experience? For Proton Waja, in many ways. It’s windows are not like any ordinary windows. Those are smart windows invented by Proton. It has this build in artificial intelligence (AI) that will automatically jam itself halfway each time a person tries to wind the windows up. Why? 2 reasons

1) Since Waja has a powerful engine, speeding at neck breaking speed can be very dangerous. To counter that, the AI would calculate the appropriate wind compensation to drag the vehicle at a safe speed – by jamming the windows! (jamming the window will interrupt the car’s aerodynamic flow when the wind pours in from the opening, thus reducing the speed).

2) The cooling effect. Air conditioning are often blamed for causing high fuel consumption. By jamming up the windows and allowing an adequate opening, part of the cooling function would be compensated by the external wind – hence, the driver can choose to turn off the air conditioning as he prefers.

A window, that can enhance the safety, and improve fuel consumption. A stone that kills 2 birds. Who would have thought of that? Not the Germans, not the French, but our very own Proton engineers.

Alright, the list could go on forever if I continue like this. I’ll save the talking and let you people get astonished with our very own Malaysian engineering marvel… the Proton Waja.